Liberal Creationism, or: Yippee, It’s Bell-Curve Time Again!

zhao

there are no accidents
thanks for the Economic Mobility article.

no one has attempted to refute my demonstration of the fallacy of the "physically fit and mentally challenged Negro" myth as perpetrated by Tea's professional sports analogy on the previous page.

i take that to mean my reasoning was pretty sound? was jogging me own gears for that one -- as i had never heard anyone else try to disspell these false, falsely exaggerated, falsely interpreted, and falsely applied notions.
 

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
I had a student hand in a paper about race and sports in which he claimed black people have an extra muscle in their legs. He cited his high school track coach as the source. It was all I could do to not stab the grading pen right through the page.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Pfff. This one extra muscle also accounts for black peoples' superior dancing abilities, no doubt. I've also heard that black people have bigger vocal chords. Must be when God was handing out body parts to the different groups he decided that if one group was going to have to be dumber and have a distinct skin color, it should get some other kind of talent to make up for it. See, talents can't be functions of different kinds of intelligence--intelligence only applies to abilities where you can prove whether you have any with paper and pen.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
You're still talking about IQ tests as if their results are generally reflected in "success" in life, and as if they measure anything tangible-scientific.

The problem with your way of thinking is that you take it as a *given* that higher IQ correlates to higher "intelligence" (whatever THAT means in your mind, your definition is clearly a lot more limited than my own). There is no data to suggest that you could even begin to correlate the results of one test to something like "intelligence" general.

IQ definitely correlates positively with academic ability - which is no less than the ability to take on new information and use it. It also correlates positively with eventual income.

From personal experience as a teacher, Cognitive Ability Tests and Reasoning Tests (which are both IQ-test like in nature) give a VERY good indication of how successful a child could be at a subject (in the near future, at least) - probably a better one than the teacher's own predictions (from seeing how children eventually settle themselves into streams that were originally determined by the teacher ie. me). Good results in CATs show high speed of thought and ability to solve complex problems. They don't necessarily correlate with diligence or high concentration levels. As long as these tests give schools information that appears to have some connection with (a hidden) reality, they will be used.

Bear in mind that these tests are designed precisely to have general relevance and predictive power of outcomes in the real world. There would be no point measuring something that is utterly abstract and arbitrary - the tests would soon be shown to be of no use and no-one would use them.

Furthermore, if there was no tendancy to agreement between tests, then wildly differing results would also render them useless.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
As pointed out countless times on this thread, the appropriately-termed KKKurvers are ignorant, racial supremacists (some of whom are Jewish BTW). Hitler too, was fond of East Asians.

Wait a sec, wait a sec: you're implying, in consecutive sentences, that the researchers must have fixed their results to make Jews and East Asians come out on top because A) the researchers themselves are Jewish, and B) because they're influenced by Nazi racial ideology that looked favourably on East Asians. Jewish Neo-Nazis? :rolleyes: This is perverse even by your demented standards.
 
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swears

preppy-kei
I think the idea is that just because you rate jews and east asians as intelligent, it doesn't automatically follow that you are free from dodgy views on blacks. Nazis aren't the only kind of racist in the world.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I think the idea is that just because you rate jews and east asians as intelligent, it doesn't automatically follow that you are free from dodgy views on blacks. Nazis aren't the only kind of racist in the world.

Fair enough. I think the main scientific arguments against the study are that there is no unique, fair and objective way to measure intelligence, and no unique, fair and objective way to factor out the various environmental influences on intelligence. As such, I would agree with these criticisms. Whether these obstacles will ever be overcome or if they are in principle insoluble, I don't know. As far as I can see, though, the reasons people are rejecting out-of-hand the entire premise of the study are mainly political rather than scientific.

Something I think is worth mentioning, though, is that a scientific study or experiment should be conducted with a clear idea of what you want to find out, and that also you should know why you want to find it out. This field of research is just so incredibly divisive, and has so much potential to be used to justify racism, that I think the whole thing should just be dropped, regardless of whatever scientific merit it might have - which, as I said, I think is questionable at best.
 
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vimothy

yurp
Oh for fuck's sake.

Vimothy, are you really going to bring up Larry Summers' ridiculous speech in this context? You realize that he literally, in the course of what he ostensibly thought was a serious discussion of "gender" and science, brought up the anecdote "my daughter has always loved dolls" as "evidence" that "gender" is biological.

I was bringing up Summers' ridiculous speech in the context of Pinker's "dangerous idea": that "groups of people may differ genetically in their average talents and temperaments".
 

vimothy

yurp
Everybody, if they've not done so already, should read this piece by Armand Marie Leroi. In particular:

The dominance of the social construct theory can be traced to a 1972 article by Dr. Richard Lewontin, a Harvard geneticist, who wrote that most human genetic variation can be found within any given "race." If one looked at genes rather than faces, he claimed, the difference between an African and a European would be scarcely greater than the difference between any two Europeans. A few years later he wrote that the continued popularity of race as an idea was an "indication of the power of socioeconomically based ideology over the supposed objectivity of knowledge." Most scientists are thoughtful, liberal-minded and socially aware people. It was just what they wanted to hear.

Three decades later, it seems that Dr. Lewontin's facts were correct, and have been abundantly confirmed by ever better techniques of detecting genetic variety. His reasoning, however, was wrong. His error was an elementary one, but such was the appeal of his argument that it was only a couple of years ago that a Cambridge University statistician, A. W. F. Edwards, put his finger on it.

The error is easily illustrated. If one were asked to judge the ancestry of 100 New Yorkers, one could look at the color of their skin. That would do much to single out the Europeans, but little to distinguish the Senegalese from the Solomon Islanders. The same is true for any other feature of our bodies. The shapes of our eyes, noses and skulls; the color of our eyes and our hair; the heaviness, height and hairiness of our bodies are all, individually, poor guides to ancestry.

But this is not true when the features are taken together. Certain skin colors tend to go with certain kinds of eyes, noses, skulls and bodies. When we glance at a stranger's face we use those associations to infer what continent, or even what country, he or his ancestors came from - and we usually get it right. To put it more abstractly, human physical variation is correlated; and correlations contain information.

Genetic variants that aren't written on our faces, but that can be detected only in the genome, show similar correlations. It is these correlations that Dr. Lewontin seems to have ignored. In essence, he looked at one gene at a time and failed to see races. But if many - a few hundred - variable genes are considered simultaneously, then it is very easy to do so. Indeed, a 2002 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Stanford showed that if a sample of people from around the world are sorted by computer into five groups on the basis of genetic similarity, the groups that emerge are native to Europe, East Asia, Africa, America and Australasia - more or less the major races of traditional anthropology.

One of the minor pleasures of this discovery is a new kind of genealogy. Today it is easy to find out where your ancestors came from - or even when they came, as with so many of us, from several different places. If you want to know what fraction of your genes are African, European or East Asian, all it takes is a mouth swab, a postage stamp and $400 - though prices will certainly fall.

Yet there is nothing very fundamental about the concept of the major continental races; they're just the easiest way to divide things up. Study enough genes in enough people and one could sort the world's population into 10, 100, perhaps 1,000 groups, each located somewhere on the map. This has not yet been done with any precision, but it will be. Soon it may be possible to identify your ancestors not merely as African or European, but Ibo or Yoruba, perhaps even Celt or Castilian, or all of the above.

The identification of racial origins is not a search for purity. The human species is irredeemably promiscuous. We have always seduced or coerced our neighbors even when they have a foreign look about them and we don't understand a word. If Hispanics, for example, are composed of a recent and evolving blend of European, American Indian and African genes, then the Uighurs of Central Asia can be seen as a 3,000-year-old mix of West European and East Asian genes. Even homogenous groups like native Swedes bear the genetic imprint of successive nameless migrations.

Some critics believe that these ambiguities render the very notion of race worthless. I disagree. The physical topography of our world cannot be accurately described in words. To navigate it, you need a map with elevations, contour lines and reference grids. But it is hard to talk in numbers, and so we give the world's more prominent features - the mountain ranges and plateaus and plains - names. We do so despite the inherent ambiguity of words. The Pennines of northern England are about one-tenth as high and long as the Himalayas, yet both are intelligibly described as mountain ranges.

So, too, it is with the genetic topography of our species. The billion or so of the world's people of largely European descent have a set of genetic variants in common that are collectively rare in everyone else; they are a race. At a smaller scale, three million Basques do as well; so they are a race as well. Race is merely a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though with no great precision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences.

But it is a shorthand that seems to be needed. One of the more painful spectacles of modern science is that of human geneticists piously disavowing the existence of races even as they investigate the genetic relationships between "ethnic groups." Given the problematic, even vicious, history of the word "race," the use of euphemisms is understandable. But it hardly aids understanding, for the term "ethnic group" conflates all the possible ways in which people differ from each other.​
 

vimothy

yurp
Steven Pinker, discussing the Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy & Henry Harpending paper on Ashkenazim intelligence, gets it pretty much spot on, IMHO:

CH&H, then, have provided prima facie evidence for each of the hypotheses making up their theory. But all the hypotheses would have to be true for the theory as a whole to be true--and much of the evidence is circumstantial, and the pivotal hypothesis is the one for which they have the least evidence. Yet that hypothesis is also the most easily falsifiable. By that criterion, the CH&H story meets the standards of a good scientific theory, though it is tentative and could turn out to be mistaken.

But is it good for the Jews? More to the point, is it good for ideals of tolerance and ethnic amity? On one interpretation, perhaps it is. Jewish achievement is obvious; only the explanation is unclear. The idea of innate Jewish intelligence is certainly an improvement over the infamous alternative generalization, a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. And attention to the talents needed in the middleman niche (whether they are biological or cultural) could benefit other middleman minorities, such as Armenians, Lebanese, Ibos, and overseas Chinese and Indians, who have also been targets of vicious persecution because of their economic success.

And yet the dangers are real. Like intelligence, personality traits are measurable, heritable within a group, and slightly different, on average, between groups. Someday someone could test whether there was selection for personality traits that are conducive to success in money-lending and mercantilism, traits that I will leave to the reader's imagination. One can also imagine how a finding of this kind would be interpreted in, say, Cairo, Tehran, and Kuala Lumpur. And the CH&H study could lower people's resistance to more invidious comparisons, such as groups who historically score lower, rather than higher, on IQ tests.

What can be done? In recent decades, the standard response to claims of genetic differences has been to deny the existence of intelligence, to deny the existence of races and other genetic groupings, and to subject proponents to vilification, censorship, and at times physical intimidation. Aside from its effects on liberal discourse, the response is problematic. Reality is what refuses to go away when you do not believe in it, and progress in neuroscience and genomics has made these politically comforting shibboleths (such as the non-existence of intelligence and the non-existence of race) untenable.

Rather than legislating facts, could we adopt a policy of agnosticism, and recommend that we "don't go there"? Scientists routinely avoid research that may have harmful consequences, such as injuring human subjects or releasing dangerous microorganisms. The problem with this line of thought is that it would restrict research based on its intellectual content rather than on its physical conduct. Ideas are connected to other ideas, often in unanticipated ways, and restrictions on content could cripple freedom of inquiry and distort the intellectual landscape.

Also, there are positive reasons to study the genetics of groups. Until the day that every person is issued a CD containing his or her genome, medicine will need the statistical boost of data on group differences when targeting tests and treatments to those most likely to benefit from them. Remember that the CH&H study grew out of research aimed at reducing the enormous suffering caused by genetic diseases. Many have effects on the nervous and endocrine systems, and connections with the psychological traits of sufferers and carriers may be unavoidable. And of course the tests could refute claims of group differences as easily as they could confirm them.

The genetics of groups is also an exciting frontier in the study of history. Many Jews have been thrilled by the discoveries of a common Y-chromosome among many of today's kohanim (believed to be descendants of the priestly caste in ancient Judea, who were themselves the descendants of Aaron), of genetic commonalities between the Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews traceable to a common ancestry in the Middle East, and of the presence of these genes in isolated communities in Africa and Asia that retain some Jewish rituals. Studies of the genes of African, American, and Australian populations could shed light on their prehistory, filling in pages that are sadly missing from the history of our species, as well as enlightening curious individuals about their genealogy.

In theory, we have the intellectual and moral tools to defuse the dangers. "Is" does not imply "ought." Group differences, when they exist, pertain to averages, not to individual men and women. There are geniuses and dullards, saints and sinners, in every race, ethnicity, and gender. Political equality is a commitment to universal human rights, and to policies that treat people as individuals rather than as representatives of groups; it is not an empirical claim that people are indistinguishable. Many commentators seem unwilling to grasp these points.

The revolution in human genomics has spawned profuse commentary about the perils of cloning and human genetic enhancement. But these fears may be misplaced. When people realize that cloning is just forgoing a genetically unique child for an identical twin of one of the parents, rather than resurrecting a soul or investing in an organ farm, I suspect no one will want to do it. And when they realize that most genes have costs as well as benefits (a gene might raise a child's IQ but also predispose him to a genetic disease), "designer babies" will lose whatever appeal they have. In contrast, the power to uncover genetic and evolutionary roots of group differences in psychological traits is both more likely to materialize and more incendiary in its consequences. And it is a prospect that we are, intellectually and emotionally, very poorly equipped to confront.​
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
But it is a shorthand that seems to be needed. One of the more painful spectacles of modern science is that of human geneticists piously disavowing the existence of races even as they investigate the genetic relationships between "ethnic groups." Given the problematic, even vicious, history of the word "race," the use of euphemisms is understandable. But it hardly aids understanding, for the term "ethnic group" conflates all the possible ways in which people differ from each other.

Exactly: it's just timidity about the R-word, since people make the (understandable, but by no means inevitable) association, 'race' -> 'racism'.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Mr Tea, you're an idiot.

Mixed_Biscuits, need I remind you that the "predictive" powers of standardized testing have been widely and validly challenged by all manner of scientists?

Can you give me some of the statistics that "correlate" success on CAT tests with success at, say, getting a report done for your boss that has the right number of bullet points in it? Of course, these stats would have to be weighted against "wealth" and other advantages that some students may already have over others.

Every year after CAT and PEP tests I was rewarded by my teachers and parents for high scores, since on the CAT tests I always scored in the 99th percentile or higher. I got a perfect score on the PEP reading test the first year they implemented it. And a lot of people would contend that I suck at life.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
"Ethnic group" is actually a much better description scientifically of what happens to populations over time in terms of similarities--you end up with traits in common that are traced and traceable both to your "ancestory" generally and your nationality specifically.

The concept of the "ethnic group" is by no means a "euphemism" for "race."
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Leroi's argument in that article is so specious it doesn't even warrant direct response.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Nomad, would you like to shut up for a moment about all the gold stars you were awarded at school and tell me exactly what I've said in this thread is factually incorrect, and why? I mean, not just political mantras like "there's no such thing as race", but specific scientific criticisms of things I've said about human genetics? Much obliged.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
Everybody, if they've not done so already, should read this piece by Armand Marie Leroi.

my god. i guess those who do not wish to see the pink elephant in the room will just simply not see it.

after all that has been said in this thread, i can not believe this guy is STILL banging on about the neutrality and innocence of this "simple little short-hand employed to make communication a little easier, nothing more".

we can point to it, we can take photographs of it, we can get testimonies from thousands, we can have x-ray scans of it, we can have piles of its shit on exhibit for all to see and smell, and people like Vimothy will always refuse to acknowledge that it is there.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Translation: Mr. Tea continues to UNSUCCESSFULLY argue that "race" exists biologically.

What, exactly, is "race" in the human genome? Which genes mark it? Which "similarities" are specifically to be considered "racial" ones? What exactly would "racial" genes mark as racial in terms of the genome?

Thanks for only including biological answers that make reference to specific genes and genotypes.
 
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